Creating two million jobs with ICT

The Federal Government has repeatedly told us that we are in for very difficult times. For a large percentage of our youths and graduates, this is no good news because quite a number of them are either unemployed or underemployed.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, out of a total youth labour force of 36,380,320 (representing 48 per cent of total labour force in Nigeria of 75.9 million), a total of 13,658,065 of them were either unemployed or underemployed in the third quarter of 2015.

This points to the fact that Nigeria is sitting on a time bomb and we need to stem the unemployment tide fast by getting our youths and young graduates busy and engaged. As someone who literally lives and breathes technology, the key question I have asked myself is: “How can we use technology to reduce unemployment especially by taking advantage of freelancing and online jobs?”

As a result of my concern, I was excited when I received the invitation of the Minister of Communications, Mr. Adebayo Shittu, who, in trying to chart a road map for the sector, invited ICT stakeholders from every nook and cranny of the country to the maiden retreat of the ministry, tagged Repositioning the Communications Sector as a Key Driver of the Nigerian Economy, held at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, Oyo State.

The key features of the retreat included a technical session and various strategy sessions that were held for the growth of the industry. I chose to join the strategic (syndicate) session that focused on Creating Two Million ICT Jobs Annually chaired by Florence Seriki, managing director, Omatek Computers.

Let me confess that at first, I had my doubts about attending the retreat because, like a lot of well-informed experts in various fields have said, Nigeria has a lot of fantastic policies in various spheres that can produce fantastic results if implemented properly.

Therefore, I thought that there was no new policy needed to be formulated for the various areas of our polity, but harnessing existing policies and setting machinery in motion to ensure proper implementation, what has been missing all the while.

Take China as an example; it started out with agriculture and gradually started to make in-roads into ICT for growth. Today, China is very close to being the largest world economy after the USA, if they have not even attained that feat yet. China is known for its exploits in the field of ICT with the production of series of tech gadgets such as smartphones, laptops as well as accessories.

All these were made possible because the Chinese government created the enabling environment and followed through with policies that ensured that all they planned for were achieved, with a large section of their population employed in the ICT sector.

If we must move this country forward in terms of reducing employment to the barest minimum, we must imbibe the culture of continuity and persistence in policies, especially in ICT. This is because the ICT sector of the economy is capable of engaging our teeming youths in gainful and sustainable employment like India and a few other countries have been able to do.

For this to materialise, however, the Federal Government needs to create an enabling environment backed with effective policies. One of the strategies that I hope the communications ministry follows through is the provision of affordable, fast and accessible broadband.

Without access to broadband Internet, creating jobs with ICT will be nothing but a mirage. This will encourage our teeming youths to embrace the challenge and take the plunge into the realm of ICT, because that is one sure way to ensure that we create jobs using technology.

I have also often argued that one of the quickest solutions to our unemployment epidemic is to set up tech hubs in every local government area in Nigeria; tech hubs that will have uninterrupted power supply, with adequate bandwidth provided for our teeming youths to take advantage of.

Employment in the ICT field in Nigeria is quite wide as there are many sub-sectors to key into. Apart from network providers, the telecoms subsector needs other players for functionality. These include recharge card production and sales, mobile phones and accessories sale and repairs of phones and accessories that youths can be employed in.

Other areas where our youths can be employed include website designing, social media marketing and management, code writing, online security, online graphics, mobile app development and even online content writing, etc., with clientele cutting across the globe. They will be operating online and earning foreign exchange through global outsourcing.

India has been the major benefactor of keying into the global outsourcing employment opportunity followed by countries, like Philippines, Bangladesh, etc., with millions of their youths employed in one online global outsourcing work or the other. Their governments create the enabling environment and provide cheap and reliable broadband. The youths in those countries earn millions of dollars in foreign exchange annually!

Another critical point that was emphasised at the retreat was the need to ensure a stable power supply. Looking back at my personal experience, I probably may not have grown in this game if not for the fact I made a smart but tough decision to purchase an inverter for my office a few years ago. This simply removed the burden of having to bother about electricity and that helped me focus on learning and growing and this is why you are probably reading this piece today.

Let me say that it is disheartening to note that the ICT sector is not included in the N200bn Micro Small and Medium Enterprises Development Intervention Fund. The Ministry of Communications should, as a matter of urgency, make a case for the immediate inclusion of the IT start-ups to access the Fund, so that they too can qualify to apply.

Finally, if we must create two million jobs, then we need to do more than just assembling the various stakeholders in the ICT industry but speedily move to ensure that young Nigerians are provided with the adequate skills and enabling environment that will help them compete for jobs online and also train them to kick-start their own tech enabled businesses.

ICT industry stakeholders, especially the ministry, must integrate the media in their planning as this will help to make mainstream the outcome of such strategic sessions. This is very important; otherwise there will be nobody to communicate this to the larger population.